Brooklyn-based DJ and musician Kilbourne’s new album, If Not to Give a Fantasy, growls with ecstatic violence. Frenetic as it feels, her industrial hardcore follows a simple method: louder, faster, harder. That could be a setup for monotony, but Kilbourne weaves in marimba, bird calls, and industrial trills to build an electronic orchestra. Despite the constraints of the genre—gravity-force four-on-the-floor, bare drones—her take on the sound is never boring. “I think it’s a way of reflecting and redirecting experiences that feel brutal or relentless,” she said in a 2018 interview. Get in or get out.
Kilbourne started out making club music, though she’s since sworn off the genre, focusing instead on industrial hardcore with a minimal edge. Though she came up in the queer and trans nightlife scene, she sees herself as “conservative,” playing into traditional ideas about what defines hardcore music. The dizzying ferocity of the lead single, “Double BBL”—not to mention stated influences like Burial and A.G. Cook—makes that label sound like a misnomer. While not as alienating as 2022’s Cathedrals EP, “Double BBL” demonstrates that Kilbourne can still eviscerate the dancefloor with pummeling, operatic degeneracy.
If Not to Give a Fantasy is a distillation of what makes hardcore so seductive: the opportunity to be annihilated, to enter a new hallucinatory realm. Kilbourne first garnered underground press for 2018’s Bloodrave: Music From Blade, a musical re-imagining of the film’s jaw-dropping opening vampiric bloodbath. These days she’s a regular at Boiler Room and queer Brooklyn parties like Unter; she also hosts her own hardcore night, Hammerhead, which doubles as the name of her independent label. At any given Kilbourne set, you’re likely to see a throng of trans women robed in black. Hunter Schafer is a fan—even claiming she wanted to take DJ lessons.
“Hardcore is for freaks,” Kilbourne has said. Some DJs like to play full songs or intersperse iconic house tracks; Kilbourne goes on the offense, demanding attention with her brutal BPMs and aggro bravado. Her eviscerating guitar licks ramp up slowly before incinerating and mutating into sludgey walls of reverb. She often makes use of icy, sarcastic vocal snippets: “I hate bald boys. I can’t stand bald boys,” the eponymous “Bald Boys” ironically exalts, sampling I Think You Should Leave over a stuttering backdrop. On “Loon Call,” she samples the Minnesota state bird, creating a disorientingly powerful contrast to the gabbering beat.
On If Not to Give a Fantasy, speed begets speed as Kilbourne experiments with new riffs on her minimalistic formula. It’s just enough to flirt with her more palatable contemporaries without giving into the urge to go full-on club. The penultimate track, “Deer Stomps Its Hooves in Warning,” features warm synths and a marimba-influenced melody long before the beat kicks in, eventually weaving deep kick drums alongside the pulsing, glittery notes. By the four-minute mark, we’re ready for heavier drums that glitch and crunch with propulsive power. Across the clawing antics of “Honeycrisp” and the subterranean sirens of “Loon Call,” Kilbourne manages to indulge her impulses without sacrificing reckless ecstasy. Both wilder than her previous records and yet somehow more polished, If Not to Give a Fantasy offers a welcoming portal into the feral magnetism of the alternative hardcore scene.
